ONE
I want to touch the edge of your voice,
the place you carry the most hurt
but also laugh hardest. That thin red boundary
between eye corner and lip curl. Your hair wet
in the rain, light dancing across a fragile smile.
TWO
How the trees bend down as though in prayer,
watching us wayward children. Buildings
mute, fixed against our gauzy innocence.
In green we are radiant, earth-born.
We don't belong here.
THREE
Her eyes are searching for the sea,
The crests of waves she imagines pulling her down
into the bottomless gray. Outside she is driftless,
but within her a thousand shades of blue swirl in unison.
FOUR
The way the light touches the summer leaves in dusk
upends me like I'm a glass of something too much,
threatening to spill over at any moment. Careless,
the taste is sharp on my lips, dark and dangerous.
FIVE
He is reassuringly marble. Cool, substantial. Calm
as the sea where he grew up. The air scalds, admonishing -
but he is the ocean. The quiet is filled with him in spaces
where he takes root. A juxtaposition of extremes.
SIX
Seven little girls in a row. Maryjanes and seriousness.
Only one smiles wider than heaven, her dreams
bigger than sky, bigger than she knows how to hold.
Her hands are empty, but her teeth glitter like
stars swallowed up by the slice of moon.
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